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Paolo Uggetti, ESPN
LAS VEGAS — Brian Kelly slammed his left fist down on the news conference table so hard his water bottle nearly toppled over.
After No. 13 LSU held a four-point lead with just under six minutes left in its season opener and lost 27-20 to No. 23 USC on Sunday night, Kelly didn’t hold back when discussing his frustrations.
“We had some guys play their butts off tonight and we’re sitting here again, we’re sitting here again talking about the same things!” Kelly said as he slammed the table. “About not finishing when you have an opponent in a position to put them away. But what we’re doing on the sideline is feeling like the game is over.”
Kelly said this is the first time during his LSU tenure that he has been “angry” at his team and added that it lacked a “killer instinct.”
“I’m so angry about it that I’ve got to do something about it. I’m not doing a good enough job as a coach,” Kelly said. “I’ve got to coach them better because it’s unacceptable for us not to have found a way to win this football game. It’s ridiculous. It’s crazy.”
Despite totaling 421 yards of offense and controlling the time of possession by six minutes, Kelly’s team failed to capitalize. Their first drive of the game traveled 74 yards on 13 plays in over seven minutes, yet it resulted in zero points. Though they trailed for most of the first half, LSU was able to grab the lead twice in the third quarter.
“Unfortunately, it’s clear that, when we get up in a game, we do not know how to handle ourselves,” Kelly said. “You’ve got to put teams away. We had an opportunity to put this team away. We get complacent, we make more mistakes when we’re ahead instead of having a, you know, better focus and a steely eyed killer instinct. That’s disappointing.”
To Kelly’s point, the Tigers had 10 penalties for 99 yards to the Trojans’ six, and a few occurred in crucial moments. On USC’s game-winning drive, a targeting penalty on LSU put the Trojans inside the red zone, where they promptly scored with eight seconds left.
It wasn’t just penalties that put LSU in a position to come up short. The Tigers’ ground game also struggled. Earlier in the week, LSU offensive lineman Will Campbell had said the Tigers would run the ball against the Trojans.
“That’s not something we’re trying to keep quiet,” Campbell said Tuesday. “I’m telling everybody right now. We’re going to run the football.”
By the end of the night, however, LSU had only 117 yards on the ground and had to rely on quarterback Garrett Nussmeier to fuel the offense. Nussmeier nearly did, throwing for over 300 yards and two touchdowns, but after scoring the go-ahead TD in the third quarter, LSU’s offense stalled and allowed USC’s new-look defense under coordinator D’Anton Lynn to keep the Trojans in the game with several key third-down stops.
“They had every right to be confident,” USC coach Lincoln Riley said of LSU’s offensive line. “But so did we. We just didn’t talk about it in the media.”
Of the 13 third downs the Tigers faced, they converted a first down only five times. After they scored a go-ahead touchdown in the third quarter, the next four LSU drives resulted in two punts, a field goal and an interception by Nussmeier that sealed the result.
“For us to be the kind of football team I want, we have to eliminate the foolish mistakes,” Kelly said. “Finally, we have to be able to play off of each other much better.”